Dear Friends,
One night, at the Polka Dot pad, I almost killed someone.
For the only time in my life, I seriously considered homicide. I thought about exactly how I was going to do it and I even started process before someone saved me from myself. She said, “He’s not worth spending time in prison over.” The person I wanted to kill was the older brother of my buddy Tom’s friend, Mike T.
We were having a party, go figure, and at some point in the night, Matt realized that a bunch of cash he had from his tax return was gone. This money was going to help pay for his trip home, if I remember correctly, and it caused the party to take a turn.
Cocaine was always involved, in those days, with this certain group of friends that Tom would bring over, and it was clear to me from the beginning that one of those guys had found Matt’s money and taken it. What wasn’t clear was who.
This asshole, Pat, the older brother, had been in the military, I think, and was pulling this crap having everyone line up and empty their pockets. He was a real piece of work and being just terrible to everyone. He was also making a big show of this and what I figured out and eventually everyone else figured out was that it was him who took the money.
Somehow, the money showed back up, but before that happened, I lost my temper a bit and had to take a walk. When I got back, I noticed that Pat was sitting out on the tailgate of Tom’s truck and being the smug prick that he was, he never turned his head to look at me or even acknowledged me walking past him.
That’s when I decided to kill him. We had a little storage room off of the kitchen and I had an old barbell set that I got when I was in junior high. It had a very sturdy pipe that you would attach the weights to when you used it. I went in quietly and didn’t say anything to anyone. I got the pipe and walked back outside.
Pat was still sitting on the tailgate facing the opposite direction. In my mind, I could see it all unfold. I knew he was too proud to turn around if I calmly walked up to him and I could have planted that pipe in the back of his stupid fucking skull.
As I was standing there envisioning this, Suzi came out and figured out what I was thinking and took the pipe way from me and pulled me back into the apartment. That’s when she told me he wasn’t worth it. I don’t know that I have been that angry with someone since then and I’ve been pissed at a lot of people.
Later on, I told Tom about it, and he laughed, but he knew I was completely serious. I think he ended up telling Pat about it and that guy never looked at me the same way again. He has no idea how lucky he was. Even if I didn’t kill him, it was going to be a bad night. There was another night when I told his younger brother, Mike, who was a total piece of shit fake tough guy that I was going to take him downstairs from Tom’s apartment and kick the shit out of him if he didn’t shut his stupid fucking mouth. He believed me, though, and shut his piehole.
Violence was not a big part of our lives, though, back then unless it was Nerf basketball time.
I have always been a big fan of nerf basketball. I even still have a Nerf hoop somewhere that I had wanted to put up in my classroom last year. In all my apartments, back in the day, I had a hoop. When I moved into the PDp, I put a Nerf hoop on the East wall of the place and would shoot hoops from time to time.
One day, we decided to get a game going. I think it was three on three. Probably Matt, Jeff, Andy, Brian, Bruce (I think), Jim, and me. We cranked up some Exploited on the stereo and went at it. It was sheer brutality and violent as hell. A mosh pit, basically, with a little orange fuzzy ball. You pretty much had to dunk it in, rollerball-style, to score and we had a blast.
I remember getting knocked into the wall so hard that it made an impression in the wall the shape of my skull and I was out for a few seconds. I got up, though, and finished the game. We ended up having Nerf battles a few times. We would push the couch out of the way and clear as much floor space as possible before cranking up the tunes and starting the war.
Music was a huge thing for us, too. We had a variety of tastes living under one roof and we shared music with each other. It was there that I developed my love for the Butthole Surfers. Jeff had a cassette tape of their album, Psychic, Powerless, Another Man’s Sac, and I fell in love with it. I would listen to it very often and started buying all their records to make up for lost time.
Andy turned us on to a lot of Seattle stuff, too, and Jane’s Addiction. He had a cassette tape that someone had made for him with the first Jane’s demos on it. I didn’t care for it, at first, but within six months or so, we were all hooked. I thought they sounded like the Three O’Clock, who I loved, if they were all junkies. That’s still an accurate take, I believe, on their early sound.
We listened to the first Ramones album a lot there, too. Matt had it, I think, on vinyl and it is still my favorite of theirs without question. Such a good record. Maybe their only truly good record all the way through, but maybe not. I’m certainly no Ramones purist.
See you tomorrow.
The barbell set was fairly similar to this except the weights were maroon in color. Murder weapons...
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